


A Smiling Saturday

by Lilac_Motion



Series: The Lost Child Universe [1]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Flashpoint Paradox, Joker!Martha, The Smiling Woman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2016-12-15
Packaged: 2018-09-08 18:02:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8855518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilac_Motion/pseuds/Lilac_Motion
Summary: "People always tell women to smile."  How Martha Wayne becomes The Smiling Woman after she lost her son to senseless violence after a family night out to cinema.





	

**Author's Note:**

> My take on why Martha Wayne would become The Joker, I think a Martha that becomes Joker after losing her child would be rather like Drusilla from Buffy, who picked her victims based on what she lost before she died.

_'I'm cold...'_

Martha Wayne lies back on the couch and talks. The therapist asks questions and she answers. "Badly." "What Alfred served, eggs and toast." "No, we didn't go out." "Yes, I had a nightmare last night (my little boy is still dead)."

Her hands are crossed over her stomach, she looks at the white ceiling and she wants to see a coffin lid come down and bring with it the dark.

When Thomas collects her at the session's end, he gives her a glance-over and then he looks away. Her familiar eyes finds in his shadowed face a growing, futile rage.

He has work and leaves her in a cab, where she can smell the soy sauce in the stain on the cloth upholstery, but she's seeing the spot on her son's shirt, the one that keeps getting bigger and bigger as his voice grows weak.

She ignores the driver and runs out.

"Mommy," a wandering little girl paws at Martha's knees, she looks at the pretty blinking face and has nothing to say, "mommy?" The child's mother finally runs over and takes hold of her daughter's hand, and smiles at Martha. Her face stays stiff and they back away.

 

Smiling mothers eats supper together on patios as the sun sets, the strollers parked beneath a garden's fence. When Bruce had been a baby, he was quiet but sweet, smiling at her with his eyes when she held him in her arms.

Then he's cold and she stands like stone, and he's gone before she returns. Women smiling at their men, children pulling at their mothers's hands. Martha watches the cues and waits for the gunman to follow, for the sound of thunder that will still the smiling women in their steps.

She waits and she waits all the way home, where Alfred takes her coat and she thanks him, and then she sits on her son's bed and stares at all the toys that hadn't been moved. Thomas isn't home yet, but he's telling her to smile. None of them understands yet, but she does and she shall show them.

 

 

\- The End -

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this all the way back in Saturday, March 16th, 2013, I am pretty sure but not 100% sure that I have never posted this anywhere before - this is the only complete piece of a AU Joker!Martha series I wanted to write after all the rants I read about Flashpoint Paradox. Here, the new vigilante in town is not Thomas, who took up the mantle briefly before retiring to the less physically exerting role of The Oracle, where he does tech support for Catwoman - "When the cat's eye light up the sky, the rats of Gotham has better hide!"


End file.
